The Long Way Round
by Zayz
Summary: Alicia's face crumples. "You hurt me," she says, her voice like broken glass, because it's the only thing left to say. "You hurt me too, Alicia," Kalinda says – gently, resignedly. "When does it end?" In the immediate wake of Will's death, Kalinda self-destructs and has to figure out who her friends are.


A/N: This story has been floating around in my head since 5x16 ("The Last Call") and 5x17 ("A Material World"). I loved seeing angsty!Kalinda, teetering on the edge of some explosive and dangerous emotion that could either break her completely or create a ruthlessly emotionless monster out of her. In the episodes after that, K reverted back to her cool, impenetrable self – and she's become close to Diane, not Alicia – so I wrote this fic to explore that angsty side, and also look at some possibility for conciliation between Alicia and Kalinda. I still haven't given up on their S1/S2 bromance; I feel very strongly about the two of them being friends again.

So it's two birds with one stone, really – deepen Kalinda's emotional landscape with meditations on how Will's death messed with her worldview, and bring Alicia back into her orbit.

A couple of other little things before you start—

1) I changed up the timeline quite a bit. Where Kalinda's sexcapades with Cary and Jenna took place over a few days, I compressed them into one terrible, terrible night, after Will's funeral. I also changed the details with the Jenna thing.

2) I did some fancy math with the show's canon and have determined that, at least for the sake of this story, Alicia is 44 years old and Kalinda is 30. That's mildly relevant later on.

I hope you enjoy this, and that you will review when you're done! It's only my second Good Wife fic, so any and all feedback is eternally appreciated.

* * *

**The Long Way Round  
By: Zayz**

No man is an island entire of itself; every man  
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;  
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe  
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as  
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine  
own were; any man's death diminishes me,  
because I am involved in mankind.  
And therefore never send to know for whom  
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

- John Donne, "Meditation XVII"

* * *

The bullet that went through the back of his head left part of his brain exposed, peering out from a jagged window blasted through his skull.

She can't stop staring at that spot – when she clutches his body in court, when she cries with Diane in the hospital, when she visits the body in the morgue later, cold and still and hardly even real.

The bone has crumbled like a hole in the ocean, interrupting the sea of his carefully slicked brown hair to reveal blood and bits of brain. Every shade of red and pink visible, instead of a smooth, unbroken brown.

His face is pristine, though – and Kalinda can't decide whether that's better or worse. Because that's Will, that's his face, and yet, that can't be Will, because the Will she knew was never pale or bloodless, eyes shut and mouth closed. The Will she knew was full of color, strutting around the office, the Cook County courthouse, blinking and breathing and laughing and winning cases.

Will's brain was not fragmented on a bloody crime scene, but whole and perfect inside his head, whirring with activity, quick retorts and passionate arguments.

The real Will would have sat up by now, wiped the crusty blood off his forehead with his sleeve, and asked what all the fuss was about, especially when they had a case to win.

But that Will isn't real anymore. He doesn't exist anymore.

He's…this. A body in a morgue. A body to be buried. Silent as the grave he will soon be put into – cold, alone.

It's not like she hasn't seen people die before. She has. People she knew, too. But this is different.

This is Will Gardner. Her boss. Her…friend.

Will is gone, and it hurts like few things have ever hurt her – scrambled her brain like eggs, tore through her tissue-paper guts, took her breath away.

* * *

She has worked hard, for many years, to make herself indestructible.

She shed her old name, her old job, her husband and all his abuse. She doesn't have real friends, just people charmed enough by her to do her favors; her loyalties are as fluid as the tides; she has sex with whomever she wants at any moment that suits her fancy, and she doesn't apologize when she slips out in the early morning and never calls again. It's her way of staying detached – and it works.

She is untethered, an emotional vagabond. Her heart is encased in a firm iron crust, and any arrows shot at it – of love, of betrayal, of disappointment – bounce right off her.

She thinks herself indestructible. Except…

Well, she has an exception. Two exceptions. And exceptions render absolutes invalid, and create the cracks in which destruction flows and grows and ultimately erupts.

Kalinda has two people that she loves, beyond all odds: Alicia Florrick and Will Gardner. She survived the loss of Alicia's friendship, somehow, but Will's death is a hurricane roaring through her ribcage, the weight of the water finally cracking the protective metal and mixing with her blood and sending pink foam waves through her lungs. Like she's drowning inside herself, but it's quiet and invisible and only she can feel her shallow breaths diminishing like a whisper in the night.

She survived one. She cannot survive another.

* * *

But she must. He's gone. They bury him a week after the shooting on the first, possibly only, truly beautiful March morning in Chicago – a few degrees above freezing with the sun out in full force, melting away the last remnants of snow.

She can't decide whether that's fitting or ironic: Will used to walk into the office so jaunty and pleased on days like this, when it felt like springtime was more than just an empty pledge in the trudging dregs of winter; and yet in his absence, Kalinda's skies are pitch-black, and she doesn't know when sunshine will come to melt her bitterness, and the weather seems like it's mocking her.

When they begin to lower his coffin into the still-partially-frozen earth, Kalinda can't look, so she watches the rest of them for their reactions: Will's sisters hold each other and cry; Diane crosses her arms tightly across her chest and stares at the handsome mahogany box slipping farther and farther away; Cary's gaze is fixed firmly on his shoes; Alicia stands stiff and aloof, her eyes rimmed with red but not focused on anything in particular.

Their grief is so open, obvious – overwhelming. They're all distraught, every single one of them, they're distraught like she is, and their sadness is like a thousand stone mallets pummeling her insides – because they loved him, and she loved him, and she didn't even know how much she loved him until he was taken from her, until he died in that courtroom and she heard the shot and she saw the body – and there was his brain, peeking out of his skull – and there were his eyes closed to everything – to Diane crying and Kalinda crying, crying until her throat was sore, and the blood, the blood on the sheets, the blood on his face, the blood rushing to her ears, she can't, she can't—

* * *

She runs inside from the service and throws up, violently, in the bathroom sink. And when there's nothing left to vomit, she dry heaves until all the wind is knocked out of her – until she's nothing but shriveled organs and brittle bones and fathomless grief.

She loved him. She hardly loved anybody in her whole life, but she loved him. Loves him. He is – he was – he's always been her friend.

And seeing him left in that grave, that dark quiet hole where he will rot until the end of all time, unravels her, unspools her like a ball of yarn rolling down a hill.

She sees Diane and Alicia heading to the bar together for drinks, but she can't stay. Not where they are, where they grieve for him – the business partner and the lover, two of the most important women in his life. She can't – she won't – be a part of that.

* * *

Except Diane excuses herself to the bathroom for a moment, and catches Kalinda on her way out, and there's something fragile and tentative in Diane's voice that makes Kalinda stop at the sound of her name, return when all she wants is to flee.

"I'm sorry to do this to you," says Diane. Up close, the lines around her eyes go even deeper, and she looks utterly exhausted. "But…Will's work things are in his office, and someone needs to go through them. Someone that I can trust."

There's something pleading about the way she tacks on the last sentence, like an afterthought – and that scares Kalinda almost as much as seeing Will bleeding on the floor of the courtroom, because Diane Lockhart is never left so exposed and vulnerable at work. Diane Lockhart never has to plead with anybody. Diane Lockhart shouldn't be looking at her the way she is, as though Kalinda is the last hope she's got.

That, really, is why Kalinda agrees to do it. Because Diane needs her – and now, in these circumstances, her loyalty is transferred straight to Diane, no questions asked.

"Do you want to have a drink with us?" Diane asks sincerely, as Kalinda is lost in thought. She gestures to where Alicia is sitting, sipping a glass of wine. Something ugly and uncomfortable knots in Kalinda's stomach.

"No, thanks. I should get back."

"Okay." Diane looks like she might press harder, but then she doesn't. She tries to smile, but her eyes are flat. "See you."

Kalinda is a better actress. Her smile is golden; she almost sells it to herself.

"See you."

* * *

Kalinda is the only one brave enough to enter Will's office that day.

It still smells like it always does – sandalwood and aftershave and fresh paper. His papers from this case are still spread haphazardly around his desk, because he'd been studying them before he left for court and he didn't put them away because he thought he would do it when he got back.

He'd forgotten his hat, too. He'd been in a rush, running late. He had grabbed his coat, but not his hat, and now his hat hangs on its hook, dares Kalinda to pick it up.

She doesn't.

She feels like an intruder, so she figures it's best to get this out of the way at once. She rips open the box, starts flipping through his work things. His handwriting is typical lawyer – sloppy, but deliberate. She runs her hand over the inked pages, trying not to think about how the last time these papers saw the winter sunlight, it was Will's hands, warm and alive and in a perpetual hurry, flipping through them.

And it's almost easy, for a few minutes. She can look through these files and focus on the words in front of her and she can forget what she's doing, why she's here. She isn't a master of repression for nothing.

But then there are those damn photographs.

He must have stuffed them deep inside a drawer somewhere, and they must have gotten mixed up in the shuffle. His sisters took all his personal items, except these – they spill out of their hiding places and flutter to Kalinda's lap like fallen leaves.

She knows better than to look. Not now, not right after Will's funeral.

But she's never been one to do the safe thing, the rational thing. She looks at them anyway.

* * *

There are three:

The first is of a toddler Will. Must be two or three, with knobby knees and denim shorts and a plain t-shirt. He's laughing at someone off-camera, his hair long and blonde and in his eyes. On the back is a scribble in purple pen from his little sister: _Love you, dork._ Dated back to his birthday last year. She slips that one in the back of a folder she knows will stay in storage as long as Lockhart Gardner owns these offices.

The second is more recent. Some banquet – two years ago, maybe. He's smiling like his thoughts are far away, probably on a case. And next to him, to her astonishment, is Kalinda herself. Wearing something black and barely appropriate for such a function, her hair tied back, her arm blurred in frozen motion.

Her fist is closed around something near the bottom of the frame, and her smile is lazy, half-hearted; she probably came to tell him something about the case he's thinking of, and got caught by the photographer too. One lowly half-second of their lives, supposedly long lost to time, but right here, captured in a photograph that he actually kept.

The pressure builds behind her eyes, as something stronger than logic threatens to make its way out of her – but she smiles to herself, running her thumb down photo-Will's torso. God, he hated that suit; she remembers now, he complained about it all night.

She gingerly folds the picture over the half she's in, and slips it into her pocketbook.

And then there's the third picture. She almost doesn't notice it at first, because it falls to the ground and is half-obscured by another file. But she finds it, picks it up, turns it over. It's a Polaroid from a lifetime ago. It's certainly seen better days; its corners are worn-out, crinkly and it looks as though someone crushed it like a snowball. She straightens it out, squints at the image. The focus isn't quite right, but she knows at once who's in the picture.

It's Will and Alicia. Georgetown. Him in a gray sweater, her in a navy blue blouse. He is so young, no lines on his face, and her hair is longer, curlier. His arm is the one lifting the camera above them, but he's not looking at the camera, he's looking down at her, and pulling her in with his other arm – and she's throwing her head back, laughing freely at something he's whispering into her neck. And Kalinda can see, from the glimpse she gets of his profile, that he's laughing too, probably shaking the camera with his laughter, which is what messed up the focus.

It was years ago, and the picture quality only got worse over time – but it's them. It's Will and Alicia looking the happiest that Kalinda has ever seen them.

She can't help but wonder when he last looked at this picture – and when it was so roughly handled, crumpled and thrown into a faraway drawer. She has a horrible hunch that she has no desire to translate to image.

Her throat is suddenly raw. A dizzying brashness grips her, ignites her muscles like hot wax. Her fingers quiver. She pushes the box away, lets it collide roughly with the legs of his couch, figures she'll get to this again tomorrow. The day after. Never. Whenever. She rises to her feet, lets the toddler picture stay on the ground.

She then storms out of the office without looking back, the Polaroid of Will and Alicia tucked hastily in her pocket.

* * *

She forgets the afternoon even as she lives it. She keeps herself well-stocked with strong liquor at her favorite bar two streets over, and drinks with abandon. Doesn't bother eating to dull the effects, but smokes a few cigarettes when she fancies a break. She blows smoke rings on the street into the sun, watches them dissolve into the air moments later – as fleeting as anything is on this rock in the middle of space, holding all of civilization together with just that invisible promise of gravity. It's a wonder anything exists at all.

But existential crises are boring. She's bored even as the thought passes through her head, like an errant cloud across the horizon. She's not interested in thinking, not anymore; she's interested in nicotine and alcohol and this moment and forgetting.

When the smoke rings become too philosophically distracting, she goes back inside and orders another shot, eyes the bar for someone she might charm into buying it for her.

* * *

This is self-destructive to the point of recklessness – but that's not what she's thinking about, as a stranger sticks her tongue down Kalinda's throat, tasting like sweetness and danger.

She lives for the flesh, for the Right Now. She is tactile – wants to lose herself in the physical sensation of touching and being touched, because it's better than whatever her mind is cooking up, and she will do anything to outrun her own head. So she hikes up her skirt and opens her legs for this woman, whose name she hasn't even asked for, right there in the bar bathroom – lets herself be taken, and shudders as she claims her prize.

The only thing that matters is that she loses herself, just for a little while. And if, in this process, her self shatters and stays lost – well, that's irrelevant. She never cared about it in the first place.

* * *

When the woman at the bar wants to go out to dinner, maybe do it all again, Kalinda says no. She doesn't want a meal and she doesn't want sex with the same person. She doesn't want a connection. She doesn't want to be liked by anyone tonight.

People who like her do so because they see her as a fresh canvas – a blank slate upon which to impose their version of who they want her to be. Most people aren't good listeners, but she is, because it's her job to be – and her admirers think that her job ends where they decree it, and she herself begins. So when they confide in her, they do it with the expectation of reciprocity – of things she can't give, won't give.

Her money, her knowledge, her expertise, she will part with – but they always want her. A piece of her. Her "real" thoughts and feelings. Her story. Her genuine loyalty.

She won't give it. She won't even entertain the possibility of giving it. She sees the hope in this stranger's eyes, the hope of something "real," maybe, when they're done having fun – and Kalinda knows it's time to cut her losses and try elsewhere.

She doesn't belong to anyone. She went to great lengths to ensure this. She belongs to no one but herself.

She doesn't want to be liked tonight.

* * *

Will did like her. When he was alive, just a few days ago.

Will took a chance on her when she was looking for a job and no one else would hire someone like her, someone who only worked on her own terms – and he was loyal to her. And not because he was mawkish or a narcissist with a hero complex, but because he valued good work, and a firm, fair bargain. She upheld her end, so he upheld his, and they got on – and not just professionally.

Will liked her personally. He wasn't Diane – he wasn't cool or unruffled or impenetrable. He certainly had the capacity to be cutthroat, manipulative, suspicious – he was a top Chicago lawyer for a reason – but he could shake all that off and go have a beer with her after work sometimes, just because he wanted to. And he was talkative, when he got his buzz on. Even a little maudlin.

For all his cynicism, he was a sentimental man. He wanted to hug her, that night they drank at the bar when she wanted to quit – the last evening they spent together, though they didn't know it then. And he wanted to hug her when she offered to help him with Wendy Scott-Carr's investigation, too, years ago.

She remembers because he surprised her – and because that was twice, in their past, that she refused a hug from him.

Not because she didn't like him back, but because she didn't need him to hug her. Hugs were things people gave each other to affirm their connection – and Kalinda never needed affirmation from Will. They had always had an understanding, and it didn't need to be articulated in any way to be real to both of them.

He didn't have a lot of friends. Neither did she. But they could be each other's friends, in this weird understated way that didn't encroach on either of their sensibilities – and that was good, and rare, and special. So good, in fact, that she let him do it without complaint, and gave him her unwavering loyalty in return.

He liked her. He did. And she liked him too. That was the problem.

They liked each other, and she got a taste of what that felt like – but now he's gone, and she finds herself cavernously empty in his absence. As though he's been wrenched from inside of her, and there is a gaping chasm left behind, aching and impossible, beautiful and terrible.

Will is dead, and there is no one else left to like her – and that hurts.

* * *

Maybe, then, it's not about wanting no one to like her.

Maybe it's just about wanting someone to like her the right way. The safe way. Liking her not as this stranger in the bar did, but as Will did – for honoring a contract, one that they both agreed on, which did not compromise her need for a back-door escape route.

She wants something with only the right strings attached – being turned on and fully into it, and then shutting it off when she's done and moving on without consequences or bruised feelings. A business deal, but friendlier.

So she leaves the bar, lets the stranger pay her bill, and drives to Cary's.

* * *

He's still in work clothes, probably only just got home, but he smiles at her when he opens the door – mischievous, affectionate, and immediately horny. She smiles back, because he's perfect – easy. She kisses him hard without saying a word of greeting, and he lets her. He doesn't mind at all when she's in a take-charge kind of mood.

She navigates him to his bed, and throws him down on the mattress, climbs up on top of him. She presses herself against him as though she can grind away the remnants of the funeral this morning from her skin – kisses his pliant lips like she's trying to resuscitate them both. It's like being underwater again, except this time she's got gills, and it's icy, and fun, and it's going to numb her up, just the way she wants.

Except, he smells like work. Like that aftershave he used to use – musky, and soft, and just a little bit spicy in a way she can't explain. The fragrance used to linger in his office at Lockhart Gardner, mingling with the scent of new paper and old law books – and suddenly, she remembers work, and court – and from there, it's blood on the floor, and pink bits of brain, and a body in a morgue—

And he's warm. Cary radiates heat, and his sweat beads at his hairline, and he is so alive, so warm and so alive, that she can't stand it.

This isn't icy, it's boiling hot; and this isn't fun, it's devastating.

She feels like she's going to throw up again.

The grief and the alcohol bubble up like acid in her gut, threatening to overflow – and she just wants to be as hollow, as empty, as she can possibly be, because it has to be better than feeling the way she is. She will take any way out, any way she can find. She squeezes her eyes shut against the tumult, and can practically feel Cary's laser eye beam searching her for an explanation in this sudden change in her behavior.

But she isn't about to explain to Cary. If she has to explain, he isn't easy or safe anymore. He won't let her forget. He's bringing it all back, and softening her resolve to the point where there's no escape, no other option but to tell him.

It's that way he touches her, the tips of his fingers gently running down her spine. It melts her. He knows how to melt her. That in itself is a disturbing fact.

So she leaves him lying on his bed, shirtless and confused, and leaves his apartment, her head heavy and aching and swimming with emotion she is unwilling to examine. She leaves him there, and she feels bad about it, which only makes everything harder.

She is so drunk right now, but reality is starting to press in, which means she needs to get drunker.

She pulls out her phone, calls a number, starts walking down the street to another bar she knows.

* * *

Jenna really is easy. There's no connection beyond the superficial – and she has a bunch of files in her apartment that would certainly change the chessboard of office politics in her favor, should Kalinda get her hands on them.

David Lee is plotting, as expected. And Diane is vulnerable – but only in the business sense. Personally, Diane can take care of herself. She doesn't need a friend. She just needs an ally. So Kalinda gives herself a new job, when she and Jenna finish drinking and head to Jenna's apartment.

She wants those files. Sex is the way to get those files. The work and the sex will be all that occupy her headspace, and she will get through this night that way – emotionlessly, productively. Efficiently.

It's the only way she knows how.

* * *

Sex with Jenna is the best kind of catharsis. Like fire slowly robbing a room of oxygen – the colors vivid, the smoke spicy and almost substantial with heat, the life draining out of her and leaving behind the loveliest hollowness.

At last, Kalinda turns her brain off, just for a few minutes, and lets Jenna work her magic. Lets Jenna press magic numbing-cream kisses onto every inch of her skin, onto her battle-worn heart. Kalinda is a limp, hollow thing on Jenna's mattress, letting her have whatever she wants, letting her control whatever she wants. It suits Jenna, who enjoys controlling other people's pleasure, and it suits Kalinda, because she is tired of chasing, of fighting.

And when it's over – when Jenna is sound asleep in bed, and Kalinda slips back into her clothes – she takes what she needs from Jenna's drawer, and exits through the second floor window: no chase, no fight, not even goodbye. Only a pleasant, meaningless interlude, before heading off for maybe another drink at the bar before figuring out her next adventure.

* * *

But the drink at the bar just makes her dizzy, and the second one makes her nauseous on top of that. She doesn't pay for them – letting an equally drunk man cop a feel settles her bill – but she stumbles outside, vomits, and wonders how she's not dead yet with all this poison in her veins, all these complications in her bones.

It's not working. Nothing is working. Not the alcohol, not the anonymous sex, not the familiar sex, not the promise of a job. Forgetting is not working: she keeps remembering, and the memories skewer her bloody.

She's falling apart.

The iron stitches in the seam of her spine are just cheap, brittle ceramic, and she is coming undone with the weight of this day, and there's no running from that anymore. She stumbles, and falls to the sidewalk, and her knees are on fire from the impact, and she isn't getting up. She stays down. She stays wounded.

She wants to sleep right here on this cold street, sleep and not wake up to the beastly hangover and leftover heartache that awaits her in the morning. She is undone and she wants her mess to remain where it is, like a monument to how far the death of Will Gardner has brought her.

There is a sense of shame in that. In how she's not Diane, the woman who started a business with him, and she's not Alicia, the woman he loved since law school, and yet seeing him die has sent her on such a tailspin. In how she can go into a tailspin at all, when she has strived her whole life to avoid such a crash. But she's not in the mood to pick that scab.

Instead, she finds her way to a park bench and curls up there in the below-freezing winter night, just her leather jacket for cover, and shivers her way to sleep.

* * *

That doesn't last long, though. Jenna calls at one AM – evidently noticing that her guest left before dawn – and she knows about the files, she knows it was a set-up, and she's furious. She threatens to GPS-locate Kalinda's cell phone and yell at her in person.

"You used me," she shouts, before hanging up the phone. It's both an accusation and a declaration of pain, and it makes something twinge inside Kalinda's alcohol-soaked heart.

And it's true. Kalinda did use Jenna, as Kalinda uses most people. And, worse, Kalinda doesn't care much that Jenna is upset; she only really regrets losing a useful contact at the FBI.

That's the way Kalinda is. She uses people like she uses Kleenex. Even someone like Cary, whom she does genuinely like, in her muddled way, falls victim to it. It's certainly more consensual, but she still uses him. He wants more than she does, and she knows that, but she doesn't make a definitive decision, to stay or go. She remains in the vague, shadowy gray area she likes to call home, and she takes what she can from him.

It's just what she does. It's a business decision as much as it is a personal one.

People can't use her back if she gives them nothing to go off. And nobody hurts her by leaving her if she never lets them into her personal life. The logic is simple, and effective.

She turns off her phone and leaves the park bench, in case Jenna decides to make good on her promise, heads to a late-night café a few streets down. A monstrous hangover is already beginning to kick in, so she orders a beer, and wonders if she can find a way to stay a little bit drunk for the rest of her life to avoid the fall-out from this.

* * *

Avoidance is an opiate – an impossibly intoxicating sensation that offers peace, but at a price. And the price is her humanity, picked off piece by piece, with every well-meaning person she pushes away.

As the beer adds its song to the cacophony of alcohol she has consumed today, she realizes she is running out of her self to give. She is out of options, out of friends. She has avoided herself into the bottom of a very lonely well.

Even her apartment is no comfort, no place to feel safe. She never bothered to let it feel like home, and so it doesn't. It's a cold, minimally decorated place where she goes to sleep. And she can't sleep, not tonight. Not with all this churning inside her, like the beginning of a tornado set to destroy the whole town.

Avoidance is an opiate – and she has run out. And reality is pressing in on her from all sides, her long-suppressed demons coming out to play.

They've been rearing to get out for a while now. Nick brought them dangerously close to the surface, and now Will's death has unleashed them. Her last, best ally – friend – has left this world, left her, and for once, she doesn't know what to do. There are no clever maneuvers lined up, no creative solutions.

The café closes at 1:30am. She gets the last of her beer to go, and wanders the streets like a homeless ghost – stares up at the stars, fights back tears.

* * *

This is it, rock bottom. Her head aching and woozy, her stomach a cesspool of poison, her heart a tangle of thorns. There is no one to call, no one to help her. She has found her sadness, and it's all she has. It's the only foundation left to stand on, in the wreckage of a post-Will world.

At last, she has come undone – and she doesn't like what she sees.

The truth is this: her friendlessness is not just a pragmatic business decision. It's a reality, and it hurts, and she doesn't know why she does what she does sometimes. She thought herself indestructible, but really, she's just alone. Lonely.

Kalinda is an island, a desolate, solitary rock floating out into an iron gray ocean, growing more distant by the moment – and while she doesn't want to be attached to the mainland, she certainly doesn't want to be this far away.

Being tethered somewhere – usually a horrendous, horrifying proposition – suddenly sounds so much better than what she's doing now.

Will is dead, and she's getting older, and she doesn't want to die alone, go to the morgue alone, get placed in the earth alone. The thought of it makes her want to scream.

She needs someone. She needs a friend. Someone to give herself to, and someone who will give themselves back to her – a safe transaction that will not blow up in her face. Someone to drink with her, and then drag her back to her apartment when she drinks like she drank tonight. Someone to get her out of her head a little bit.

She needs someone she can trust.

She needs…a moment.

So she lowers herself into a hard, freezing chair outside a restaurant long closed for the night, her breaths hitched and shallow, and she lets herself cry – softly. She lets herself miss Will, and mourn for herself. It doesn't matter exactly which parts of herself she's mourning for; just that she is, and it's cathartic in an honest way. More honest than with Jenna. The most honest she's been in a long time.

Still crying, she rises to her feet again, and stumbles along an old path she used to know, once, hoping beyond hope for something she can't even name to herself—

* * *

At two AM the night after Will's funeral, Alicia Florrick is not asleep. Her children are with her husband, and her apartment is quiet, and she is nestled beneath a heap of blankets in her bed, comfortably buzzed on wine that was supposed to have put her to sleep but didn't.

The doorbell rings out of nowhere like shattered glass, and she nearly jumps out of her skin.

She thinks it's probably Cary with some kind of weird, late-hour client emergency – he said he would be working late tonight, and these kinds of emergencies do happen with a wearying frequency – which is why she pads to her front door, and opens it without checking the eye-hole.

But, to her astonishment, it's not Cary. It's Kalinda – disheveled, her hair falling out of a sloppy bun, her eyes simultaneously wild and dead. She smells like beer and old vodka, and leans against the doorframe like her legs are this close to buckling under her. She looks surprised, for a moment, that Alicia actually answered.

Alicia blinks, crosses her arms almost defensively against her chest. She's wearing old gray sweatpants and a thin white t-shirt, which suddenly feel insubstantial, hardly any cover at all.

"Kalinda. Are you…all right?" she asks, as gently as she can through her confusion.

Kalinda opens her mouth to say something, but her tongue is thick and sodden and useless, and the words won't come out, and even if they did, she's not sure what she would say. There's nothing to say – just everything to feel, everything to finally catch up with her, and overwhelm her, and turn her into pudding on Alicia's doorstep.

"No," she manages, running a hand through her loose hair, making it even looser. "I don't…know."

They both hesitate a moment, both of them standing nervously on either side of Alicia's doorway. This is certainly unorthodox, and not quite welcome on Alicia's part – but neither can she turn Kalinda away, not like this.

Alicia is about to invite her in, when Kalinda suddenly squeezes her eyes shut, manages to explain to the air, with great effort, "I just—I lost my only friend, okay? I-I lost him t-too. It hurts."

Alicia immediately goes tender, her too-ready tear ducts already threatening to overflow – but Kalinda just falls apart completely, crumples against the doorframe, her eyes still squeezed shut, as though if she doesn't look, it'll all go away faster.

It's Kalinda as Alicia has never seen her – as no one has ever seen her. Quiet, cock-sure, impenetrable Kalinda is crying freely, openly, and she suddenly looks her age: barely thirty years old, more than a full decade younger than Alicia. In fact, in this moment, she somehow reminds Alicia of Grace – crying because she's ready to explode, crying because she needs comfort. Crying because she needs to be held.

By instinct, Alicia moves beyond the threshold of her doorway, and brings Kalinda's face into her shoulder, strokes her hair as she has stroked Grace's so many times. And at first it's careful, ginger, with Kalinda refusing to rest her full weight on Alicia, and Alicia unsure about how tightly to hold Kalinda, everything considered – but then it's not careful anymore, because it's so late, and Will just died, and Kalinda is crying, and now Alicia's crying too, the salt of her tears in Kalinda's hair, Kalinda's shuddering sobs echoing off Alicia's collarbone, soaking through her thin t-shirt into her skin.

She's saying something, something against Alicia's shoulder – and though Alicia doesn't understand what the words are, that doesn't matter.

She clutches Kalinda's hair in her fist, undoing the last remnants of her bun so that her hair is loose and wild down her back, and whispers, "I know. I know. I know."

And she does, even if language couldn't quite get them there.

She understands loneliness. She misses Will too.

She dissolves into genuine tears herself, right there in her doorway, in Kalinda's arms.

* * *

It takes a long time for Kalinda's sobs to finally subside, for her to re-emerge from Alicia's shoulder wary, her guard only hastily re-assembled. When she sees the mess she made of Alicia's shirt, she almost starts crying all over again.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," she gasps, wiping her eyes, automatically taking a step back.

"It's okay. Don't worry about it." Alicia wipes her own eyes, and crosses her arms once more – protectively, now, not defensively.

And seeing Alicia there at her door, with her shirt wet and her arms crossed, her curls a mess and her eyes shiny and wet, is the thing that brings Kalinda to her senses. The enormity of this – of coming unannounced, on an impulse, in the middle of the night, to the apartment of a woman with children, a family – a woman she isn't even associated with anymore, a woman whose pain and shame she contributed to that time long ago – reaches her, and it's like she can't breathe all over again.

"I'm sorry," she says again, pulling a hair-tie out of her pocket and instinctively tying her hair into a tight ponytail. "I…shouldn't have come. I'm sorry. I'll go." The mask is already half on, crystallizing back into the familiar vague coolness that Alicia knows so well.

Yet, despite the strangeness of the moment – the estrangement of the last couple of years – Alicia finds that she doesn't want her to. Not yet.

It's too weirdly gratifying, this – seeing that Kalinda is even capable of falling apart. Seeing that there's something beyond her sphinxlike exterior, something as raw and messy and uncertain as anybody else's heart. As Alicia's own.

"It's okay," Alicia says again. She hesitates, then asks, "Do you want to come in?"

Kalinda, who had begun to turn and walk away, hesitates too. For a beat, she is just a bunny rabbit of a girl, rather than an enigma of a woman: she freezes, caught, a ripple of fright openly flickering in her dark eyes.

Does she want to come in?

Her ponytail is back in place now, and so are her careful instincts. She searches Alicia, ransacks her expression like the determined investigator that she is, looking for clues of some kind of insincerity, some kind of double-cross. Shame and fear over her outburst make her sharp, guarded.

Yet, Alicia appears genuine. Her arms are still crossed against her chest, but her expression isn't unfriendly. She looks concerned, more than anything else – concerned and exhausted with grief. The lines in her face seem deeper, make her look older. She's a little thinner than usual, and she has bags under her eyes, and her shoulders curl slightly inward, making her look even smaller.

She's not combative. She's not even defensive. Alicia is just there – and that is the most beautiful thing she could have been tonight.

Kalinda breathes deeply, makes a timid step towards the door – and Alicia steps back at once, leaving the doorway clear for Kalinda to enter.

* * *

Alicia motions for Kalinda to sit at the kitchen table, then disappears into the kitchen for a moment. Kalinda hastily wipes away the wetness from her eyes with her sleeve – and when she looks up, Alicia returns to the table with a bottle of wine and two glasses.

It feels like lifetimes have passed since the two of them have had a drink together. The sight of Alicia popping the cork makes something inside Kalinda melt. But she is genuinely afraid that she will overdose if she drinks any more alcohol tonight, so when Alicia's hand hovers over the second glass, Kalinda shakes her head.

Alicia nods, but takes a big sip of her own helping. Again, an achingly familiar sight. Alicia has always loved her wine.

The apartment is still and silent and dark, save for the two of them in the kitchen beneath the ceiling light. The air between them is tense – tentative. Alicia takes another sip of her drink, tucks her curls behind her ear; she plays her poker face masterfully, but Kalinda has worked with Alicia for too long to not pick up on the undercurrents of Alicia's discomfort. And her discomfort, while understandable, only heightens Kalinda's nerves.

She is all too aware of how inappropriate, how frankly unfair it is, to show up at Alicia's door on a day like this, when Alicia herself is grieving. She knows she has no right to ask anything of Alicia. And that makes it even worse to sit here, at Alicia's table, Alicia's wine between them, still reeling from the thunderstorm of her anguish but unable to find words important enough to bridge this silence.

Kalinda bites her lip, her dark eyes doleful as she fixes her gaze on Alicia's face. She hesitates, then says, "I really am sorry for coming by."

Alicia sets her glass on the table, sits up ramrod straight. But she just looks so tired. "It's fine. I couldn't sleep anyway."

"Me either."

Alicia sighs like she's a thousand years old. "It's been…hard," she says, and Kalinda believes it.

"The firm has been chaotic."

"Is Diane okay?"

Kalinda pauses, and that gives away the answer. "She will be."

Alicia's eyes flutter shut; when they open again, a flicker of pain passes like a shadow across her irises.

"It's just…I don't know what she's going to do without him. I don't know what I'm going to do without him."

For a moment, she looks like she's afraid she's said too much – but Kalinda's expression is kind, and her eyes smolder with a rare, open compassion.

"You both will do what you always do," she says softly, her usually silky voice tinged with melancholy. "You'll bounce back."

Alicia's smile is small, and rueful, but real. This is Kalinda's gift: she knows how to listen beyond mere words. And, when she is so inclined, she knows how to say exactly what the other person needs to hear.

Alicia takes a sip of her wine, and studies Kalinda's face – the residue from her tears, glistening beneath the bright ceiling light, the stray wisps of hair framing her face, the way her sadness makes her look both so young and so old. Alicia leans forward, catches another whiff of beer, wonders exactly how much Kalinda has drunk tonight. Even when she is being forthcoming, she remains a bundle of mysteries, leaving more questions than answers.

So Alicia asks, gently, curiously, "Why are you here tonight, Kalinda? Really?"

She expects Kalinda to bristle, close up – refuse to answer, as she has often done when Alicia dares ask her anything personal. But a lot of time has passed, and brought conflict and tragedy with it; both women have changed by necessity. Alicia says what she's thinking – and Kalinda throws a little caution into the wind, because Alicia's kitchen is as safe a place as she knows right now.

She admits, "I…don't have a lot of people I like left."

"Wait, but isn't Cary seeing you now?" Alicia suddenly remembers that conversation – just before Will died. "What's going on with you two, anyway?"

The space between Alicia's question and Kalinda's answer is stiff, uncharted territory – Kalinda looks like she's been backed into a corner, and Alicia isn't sure whether or not to back off – but once again, Kalinda swallows down and attempts to bury her discomfort.

"I like Cary," she says carefully, "and Cary likes me. But he isn't really my…friend."

"So you're just sleeping with him." Alicia doesn't mean to, but the remark comes across a little sharp. Cary is her business partner, after all, and there are personal as well as professional implications at play here. As ever.

But Kalinda shakes that off, shakes her head firmly. "No. No." Her voice is still soft and silky – and yet there is this grit, this painful sort of honesty, anchoring her in hesitant but authentic truth. "I just…I won't cry in front of him. Not…now."

Alicia nods slowly, digesting this. Her expression is impassive, gives nothing away. She drains the last of the wine from her glass, and pours herself a little more. "I didn't see it coming with you two," she admits as she does so.

"I didn't see it coming when you left with Cary."

The words come out of her mouth before she can stop them – and though quietly delivered, they, too, sound a little sharp. Accusatory. Alicia looks up, surprised but also prepared to answer.

"That…was a decision I needed to make for myself," she says. "I needed to…move on."

"Things do change." Kalinda idly fingers the lip of the empty wine glass in front of her. "I still remember your first day at the firm."

The images return to Alicia clear as photographs – a muddled, tumultuous day, with a rapid pace and no shortage of surprises. Despite herself, she smiles.

"Right. That pro-bono. You told me not to get too attached to my clients."

"Was I wrong?"

To this, Alicia actually laughs aloud – and in the context of tonight, the sound is a small miracle. "No, you weren't wrong," she says. But her brow furrows more seriously as she muses, "It was never my clients I was too attached to, though. It was…everyone else."

"Diane. Will."

"You."

Now Kalinda is genuinely taken aback. "Me?"

Alicia nods. Her gaze turns to the wine bottle, and her hand lingers near it, as though contemplating whether or not she needs a little more to make this point. But she decides against it.

She looks the younger woman in the eye, calm like the eye of the storm, and says, "I was really hurt when I found out that you had lied to me, Kalinda."

And there it is: the root of their conflict, stated baldly, almost detachedly, but loaded like a barrel of gunpowder at the edge of dynamite. It was childish of Kalinda to think that she could show up at Alicia's door and sit at her table and talk without this returning to the forefront – and yet, it still stings, like it did when it first happened.

"Who told you? I never knew," Kalinda asks, forcing herself to stay cool.

"That investigator. Wiley."

"Bastard." Now Kalinda does reach for the wine, pours herself a healthy measure, and gulps it down. She wishes she had a shot of vodka instead – something that tasted like fire, left scorch marks on her soft pink throat.

"But it should have been you," says Alicia. There is a sense of restraint in the way she cuts the sentence off too quickly. "You should have told me the truth yourself. I didn't want to be your pity project. I thought we were better than that."

"We were," Kalinda insists, and it's like an arrow through both their stomachs. "And you were not a pity project. I don't do pity projects."

"But that ruined us." _You ruined us._ The subtext flashes between them, and makes Kalinda's insides go cold.

"How long are you going to keep punishing me, Alicia?" Her voice is low, tight, almost dangerous. "I apologized. I tried to explain. I…tried to make things right. Your husband meant nothing to me."

"It's not about Peter." Each word rings, quivering with intensity. "I'm done with him. I've been done. This is about the fact that you were part of another lie. It's about…it's about me not having a lot of friends either, and losing one I cared about, and not knowing how to find my way back. I still don't know what I'm supposed to do. Everything is different now. We work on opposite sides half the time, and Will is…"

She stumbles there, unable to say it, unable to acknowledge the unshakeable reality of it – but she continues, with some weariness, "You use people, Kalinda. You're seeing Cary right now, but he was just a lead at the State's Attorney's office for a long time. Who knows what you're using him for now, what you've gotten from him about our firm. And me – you used me too. You used me to make you feel better about what you did with my husband. You let me believe that we had a good foundation. You took me out for drinks, and you gave me advice, but you apparently didn't think I deserved the truth about us. About you."

Real anger crystallizes on Kalinda's face now – as real as the grief that had shocked them bot when Alicia opened her door tonight. The mask is gone, and she is as raw as Alicia, all these old wounds reopening and sending poisoned blood back through her body, to the insides of her ears and the surface of her cheeks.

"It was real for me," she says. She's barely above a whisper in her ferocity, but Alicia hears every word as though it's shouted into her very heart. "All of it was real for me. You. Will. Cary. Especially you, though. But I'm sorry for wasting your time."

She gets up from the table, pushes her chair roughly towards the table. She was wrong; this apartment isn't a safe place. It's just the place where Alicia lives, where Alicia has undone the final thread in the shapeless mass of misery she has become. She will deal with herself alone.

As an afterthought – an almost spiteful one – she pulls out the Polaroid of Will and Alicia from her pocket, and throws it at Alicia's feet.

"I found it today," she says, with an edge that could cut. "You can have it."

Alicia bends down to retrieve the picture, and Kalinda can't bear to look at her once she realizes what it is. She feels the force of Alicia's gasp before she hears the sound, and doesn't stick around to see the aftermath.

She makes her way out the door, almost makes it to the elevator – but behind her, she hears footsteps stumbling after her. Alicia's footsteps.

"Kalinda."

By instinct, Kalinda stops, turns around to see Alicia standing in her doorframe, clutching the picture in her hand, tears in her eyes.

"Kalinda. Wait. Please."

And now it's Alicia Florrick standing in front of Kalinda, vulnerable. It's Alicia Florrick who is pleading. Diane and Alicia, both of them in one day – it makes her head hurt. It makes her heart hurt.

She considers making a break for the elevator, maybe the stairs – but Alicia will ask again, and Kalinda doesn't want to make her. Weary, she takes no steps forward, but reorients her body to face Alicia, her usually unreadable eyes smoldering, overflowing.

"Where did you find this?" she asks, wiping the wetness from her eyes with her arm.

Kalinda hesitates, but admits, "Diane had me go through Will's work boxes today."

"This was in his work boxes?" Alicia looks at it again, as though the image will change.

"Must have slipped between drawers or something."

Alicia holds the picture tenderly in both hands, her eyes shiny, more tears threatening to fall. And one does fall, rolls down her wrist. Again, she wipes her eyes, grips the picture tight with shaky fingers.

"Thank you for giving this to me," says Alicia, her voice not quite steady.

"You're welcome." Still, Kalinda stays where she is.

They are silent, waiting. Waiting for something, for each other. Alicia runs her thumbs up and down the Polaroid – back to the time when she and Will were happy. Back before everything got so messy, so endlessly complicated. Back when they thought they had all the time in the world. Still, _still_, in her darkest moments of grief, a part of Alicia cannot quite believe that Will is really gone – the Will that could promise forever, giddy as a child, and somehow seem to mean it.

But forever was a promise he couldn't keep. Avoidance was an opiate – but here is Alicia's crash, and the hangover, and the grueling, protracted crawl back to some kind of normalcy. And in the midst of that hell, here is Kalinda, closer to the elevators than to her door – Kalinda, who brought her this final gift, when she thought she would have nothing left of him. Kalinda, who does not trust and cannot be trusted, but who did both tonight, with her sadness and her loose hair spilling onto her shoulders and her lingering hope, three and a half years later.

At last, Alicia's face crumples. "You hurt me," she says, her voice like broken glass, because it's the only thing left to say. It's a whimper, a final plea in this quiet hallway – her last defense on this awful, awful night, to one of the few real friends she's ever had.

"You hurt me too, Alicia," Kalinda says – gently, resignedly. "When does it end?"

Alicia leans against the doorframe, presses her forehead against it so that all Kalinda sees is her profile, half-obscured by a curtain of brown curls. And she knows they're both thinking the same thing, thinking about the picture in her hand. Thinking about Will, and how little time anyone has.

Kalinda waits there, while Alicia shudders quietly against the frame, trying to compose herself. Slowly, slowly, the tears subside, and Alicia slowly remerges, her back straight and her hair tucked behind her ears. Her eyes still glisten, but her cheeks are dry now.

Life is too short for this. For the bickering. For not making amends. It doesn't matter anymore what side Kalinda and Alicia are on. Not after what happened. Not now.

Despite so much daily human contact, when it matters, they are both alone. Lonely. And they both need each other. After so many years, after everything that has happened, Alicia is here, and so is Kalinda, and they are all the two of them have.

Alicia steps beyond her doorframe, walks right up to Kalinda, close enough to smell the alcohol on her, count her every eyelash.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, quiet but true.

Kalinda glances down to her shoes, to Alicia's knees, and then back to her face. She looks as wretchedly, desperately miserable as Kalinda feels. This has been so hard on both of them.

Kalinda's hand cups Alicia's shoulder, tender but firm; she squeezes tight, and, looking her in the eye, says, "Okay."

* * *

Instead of wine, Alicia pours them two glasses of water – simple, clear, non-intoxicating. They make two silent toasts: the first for Will, the man they both love and miss, and the second for each other. For allies – for friends – in these long, dark days and nights to come.

It is a tenuous, imperfect, inebriated peace – but it is what they have. And it will have to do for now.


End file.
